


In desert wasteland, stories tell you

by Pteryxcat



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Fairy Tale Elements, Freeform, Gen, GodsNeedBeliefBadly, Immortal Max Rockatansky, Oral History, Post-Mad Max: Fury Road, and also monsters. and heroes., and fae other creatures that proooobably aren't human? best be polite anyway., because people need heroes and stories have power and sometimes belief can stretch reality, but also if there's too much belief and no gods then the stories will create gods from people, immortal furiosa, post-apocolyptic mythological systems need saints and tricksters and monsters under the bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-16 11:06:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11827458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pteryxcat/pseuds/Pteryxcat
Summary: For years, the stories slept, because people didn't need them. But the world broke. And the stories found new people to tell.





	In desert wasteland, stories tell you

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [В пустоши сказания говорят тобой](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16631858) by [kuzzzma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuzzzma/pseuds/kuzzzma)
  * Inspired by [Drifter](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3994132) by [kaasknot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaasknot/pseuds/kaasknot). 



The stories were lost for a long time. Houses covered them, roads bound the earth. They were buried under steel and glass and concrete, and they forgot they had ever been real.

The desert remembered. The desert remembered, and the dark forest, the grass oceans, deep seas and the frozen lakes as big as the sky. But those are all gone now. Only the desert remains.

Who killed the world?

The stories seep up from the cities, through rubble and abandoned bodies. They rise from cracks in sun-baked river mud, from under years of litter drying on the old sea floor. They whisper secrets to any who can hear them: the white-haired girl in the locked vault, the forgotten child, the dying warboy half-buried in sand.

People need the stories again. And, for better or worse, the stories are here. 

In the cities there are feral hunters that stalk through ruined and crumbling skyscrapers, human… until you see the eyes, the metal fangs, the claws that carry them up the building sides to hiss from rooftops. But if you’re lost, and if you’re kind, and if you share what you have, you’ll find secret stairways and cisterns of rainwater and rooms of untouched treasures of the old world. 

The remnants of the ocean — dark brown, salty, far from the old shore — has rafts of people, families that ride the storms and pull up six-eyed fish. The ocean has never been safe, and its stories never truly left: great seabeasts that ruin ships, serpents in the depths, birds that lead sailors home. That’s to be expected — even though nothing that big should be able to live in the ruined water, and birds are long gone to dust.

The desert waits. People live here, same as everywhere else, doing their best, dying. The stories change them, sometimes, wind-creatures thirsty for the water in people’s veins, or scraggly stilt-walkers, searching for roots in the last of the mud, or the digging ones, going ever deeper in search of hidden rivers. The Mad trickster drives forever, always running on fumes and yesterday’s meal, trying to fix other people’s messes well enough that he can finally let himself leave. He was there when the world died, and he'll be here in the ashes until the world rises again.  
But the stories also found Immortan Furiosa, the green one, who finds water and seeds and leads women out of the dark. She was real once, at the citadel, the rogue Imperator who opened the gates and gave the Sisters her council. It’s been years and years and thousands of days since she last drove into the desert, and the daughters of the Sisters daughters are the ones who now share out the water. But people still arrive at the gates of the garden, saying the Furious one showed them the way to the green place. They say she drives the wind and walks through the storm, untouched by the sand, and canteens fill in her presence with the sweetest of fresh water.

The stories remember how the world was. Maybe they’ll sleep again, back under the earth, when the whole world is covered again with green.

**Author's Note:**

> I dunno. Just some stuff I've been thinking about lately, about the myths people will make from the wreckage of civilization.


End file.
